Mattoverse AirTrash

The Mattoverse AirTrash is a fuzz pedal for guitar or bass that, in its maker's own words, "sounds like absolute garbage." That is the point: Mattoverse Electronics found the circuit while breadboarding an idea, happened on sounds the designer describes as "absolutely sickening, like really bad," and could not stop playing it, so the sounds were left unrefined and turned into a pedal¹. The result is a lo-fi fuzz that press coverage has compared to fuzz with a touch of ring modulation or sample reduction thrown in, and it is not based on any known fuzz circuit²³.

The pedal is very sensitive to pick attack and input volume, so it reacts to how you play rather than sitting at one fixed texture⁴. Mattoverse describes the MKII version as both a bizarre fuzz/distortion pedal and a unique dynamic modulation pedal, capable of sounds "from compressed fuzz, to carbonated fizz, to burbling glugs, airy static, and everything in between"⁵.

The controls

The original AirTrash keeps it simple with three knobs, color coded. The blue knob controls the output level. The red and yellow knobs are a different story: Mattoverse states plainly that the maker "could not come up with words to properly describe what the red and yellow knobs do," so they are labeled with small icons instead⁴⁶. Gearnews, covering the launch, noted the same thing: blue is the overall output level, while the yellow and red dials' parameters are indicated only by pictograms, and the writer found them not easy to describe exactly². In practice you learn those two controls by ear.

The MKII adds two controls to the original three:

The Clean-Blend-Trash knob is the MKII's biggest functional change. Delicious Audio reports that the post-gain control, sitting after the blend stage, delivers a significant boost in output volume, and that it can push the crushed fuzz textures to maximum levels or serve as a robust boost/overdrive blended with the noise⁸. That gives the MKII a practical side the original lacked: you can dial in how much of your clean signal survives alongside the corruption.

History and versions: from the original to the MKII

Mattoverse Electronics announced the AirTrash in April 2019, with Premier Guitar reporting at the time that it was not based on any known fuzz circuit and carried a $119 street price³². Gearnews covered the launch the same week, describing it as a "weird and wonderful new fuzz effect" with an RRP of USD 119². The circuit came out of Matt Olson's breadboard experiments: gearnews reports he found it while "playing around with breadboard circuit ideas and making the integrated circuit squeal," abusing an IC rather than cloning a classic fuzz². Olson is the company's circuit designer and CEO⁸.

The MKII arrived seven years after the original, in 2026, in an acrylic-fronted edition with the two additional controls described above⁵⁹. Mattoverse says the core AirTrash circuit is unchanged in the MKII, with only minor tweaks to allow the clean blend⁵. Delicious Audio likewise reports the MKII retains the core character of the original circuit, which remains heavily responsive to input volume and pick attack⁸.

Along the way the AirTrash appeared in several limited finishes, including an engraved transparent blue acrylic faceplate with a white LED at $159.00 USD and an engraved clear acrylic faceplate with a pink LED¹¹⁰. The MKII came in Gray, Pink and Yellow variants⁵. Both the original and the MKII are currently listed as sold out at the maker's store¹⁵.

What reviewers said

Coverage has consistently framed the AirTrash as an experimental tool rather than an everyday fuzz. Gearnews called it "certainly an acquired taste," aimed at noise makers and experimental players rather than everyone, while noting it has "a sound all of its own" within the realms of unadulterated fuzziness, and that the true bypass means it "won't mess with your tone when not engaged"².

Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson has been a long-time fan, writing that he has "always liked the AirTrash - a very unusual experimental noise-maker fuzz - which I always refer to as a signal scrambler and corruptor"⁹.

Delicious Audio's write-up of the MKII, quoting Olson, includes a telling anecdote about the original⁸:

That tension, between a pedal that sounds too broken to use and one you cannot put down, is the through-line of nearly everything written about it⁸.

Where it fits and what to feed it

Mattoverse says the original AirTrash works well with guitar or bass and usually sounds best with the instrument plugged straight into it, first in the pedal chain¹. The maker also notes it did not do much on synths or drum machines⁶. The MKII widens that claim: Mattoverse describes it as a pedal for guitar, bass, synths and drum machines, helped by the clean blend that lets some of the source signal through⁵. Because it is sensitive to volume and dynamics, anything you put in front of it, such as a boost or an active pickup, will change how it behaves.

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